The Saga Continues

I've been sick since the twelfth. I ended up taking the entire last week off, and sat around at home almost the entire time being a bum and playing computer games. I loved it. It was like a mini vacation, except for the part about being super congested. I am still sick. By Thursday, whatever I had decided to migrate to the back of my throat also up into my eyes. My right eye got all pink and gross, so I would tell everyone that I had pink eye, and not to fuck with me because I wield the power of infection. Every time, Nick would tell me I didn't have pink eye, and I don't think I do, but it's fun to joke about. Now both of my eyes are all fucked up, though they look fine, but they ooze at night and crust shut so I have to wash my face before I can see. 'Ewwww', I know!

Being Sick is Love

Saturday night I went to see The Nutcracker. I'd seen snippets on TV, but I'd never seen it live. I'd been telling Nick since early November that I wanted to see it, so his parents gave us their tickets, since they see it every year. 4th row and center! Unfortunately, Nick didn't come along because he started getting really sick right after his last final on Friday. I asked his brother, Chris, to come with me instead, and afterwards we went to eat at magnolia, and I had roasted veggie tacos, and we drank tons and tons of coffee. I had fun, and I don't hang out with Chris like I used to.

As for today, I am taking the day off from work. Nick infected me with some sort of vile disease and now I'm sick... and I really don't mind. I have been wanting to get sick for awhile so that I can stay at home and mope in bed and pout and get pampered, and make Nick bring me soup, oranges, and hot chocolate with cheese. Since Nick is sick too, we are going to gripe in bed together, saying 'please pass the tissue,' and 'oh, my nose is so stuffed up,' and then sit on the sofa under a mound of blankets and watch movies.

Office-cial Christmas Party

Saturday I went to the office Christmas party. It was at the Moonshine Grill. One of the investors that was there owns the property the restaurant is on and he built, what wine connoisseurs have declared, by far the best wine cellar in Texas. He gave us all a tour of it, and it was gorgeous, with mahogany wood and a cast iron door. There was a bottle of wine down there valued at $9,700 whose label was designed by Andy Warhol. He personally selected all the wines that went with our meal, and I got smashingly smashed. Well, smashed is an exaggeration, but I was definitely in no state to drive, and it was great fun. I had Molasses & Chile Cured Pork Chop with Brandy Apple Sauce. So good! Going there isn't any more expensive than Outback Steakhouse, so I'd love to go back and try some of the other food.

I wore a fabulous dress, too. Unfortunately, this less than flattering vanity shot is the only picture I managed to take, since I left the camera in the car and valet drove it away. Trust me. It was fabulous.

After dinner there was a White Elephant gift exchange. There was theft, conspiracy, and betrayal, and with everyone plied up with alcohol lots of cheering and booing. Nick and I both ended up with some good stuff. He brought home a pancake maker, which turned out to be a disaster during breakfast the next day. I had pancake batter drenching the stove. Nick said it looked like a pancake had exploded. I should scour the kitchen for pancake shrapnel in the walls. I think I simply over filled the damn thing.

About Yarn Time

I'm in a rather loquacious mood, which is unfortunate because I'm at work and have no one to talk to. I'm still yo-yoing between hobbies. I'm still on a gaming kick (nerd core!), but now I want something to supplement it, and I haven't really felt like reading lately. Suddenly I decided I wanted to try out knitting, which is weird because I usually find the idea to be a turn off. I think it's because, in my mind, it goes hand in hand with giggly girly girls. Yech!

So... knitting. But, not just knitting, I want a sewing machine so I can hit some thrift stores and try my hand at deconstructing. In any case, I picked up Stitch 'N Bitch to teach myself to knit, and at the top of this post, you can see a lovely picture of my first effort. I am proud of my swatch.

Winging It (or, More Bad Poetry)

Whippoorwills
While away where they will;
Winging and and whirling they wind.

Flighty and fleet,
Full of frolicking feats,
Frisky and fancy, you'll find.

Thanksgiving pt. 2

A very belated update, on my part. I've taken the opportunity to use my break to be a bum and sit around an home eating take-out Chinese and playing computer games. I went with Nick to his parents house for Thanksgiving, since I had Thanksgiving with my parents the weekend before. We took our dog along because he gets cooped up alone at home allot. I met Nick's aunt Judy, who was visiting, and even though there were already four pies, Nick and I had planned on making some, so we made a pecan and a rhubarb pie. They turned out fantastic. I'd never had rhubarb pie before and I'd been wanting to try it because it's Nick's favorite. I'm not too keen on tart pies, but it wasn't bad. I think my big mistake was eating pecan pie first which made the rhubarb extra tart. I took my camera with me, but only managed to take one picture of Nick looking very tired, because he was sick.

Hello, I'm Still Alive

I don't know if I picked it up from Nick, or what, but lately I've been skipping between hobbies. For a while I would spend a chunk of time reading every night before I went to bed and browse Amazon endlessly in a mission to produce THE LARGEST WISH LIST THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN!!! Then I started having shopping sprees at Michael's, browsing works on devianart and dabbling with acrylics, water colors, and vector art.

Ever since the release of Halo 2, I've spent all my my free time gaming. I don't know what it is about video games that sucks my attention to the point that I'm oblivious to everything else, but there you have it. I am a gaming zombie, and I need fresh pixels to feed to my insatiable undead eyeballs. The Nintendo DS (Dual Screen) was released yesterday, and I ran out and bought it because I've been set to pee myself from excitement every day of this month, straight, with a sprinkle of urinary impulses spread across the month before that. I love my DS, I just wish I had money to buy a game for it. At least it came with a demo.

Being a dork aside, I actually did something this weekend. I drove to San Antonio to visit my parents so I could spend Thanksgiving with my boyfriend. Bad timing. The stay itself was fine. In fact, my mom decided to have impromptu Thanksgiving Sunday instead. It was the drive down that was horrendous. I didn't bother checking the weather before I left, and I dealt with 15 minutes of rain so hard that I could literally not see the road. I even tried exiting the highway, but I couldn't see anything past the exit ramp and I was worried about accidentaly driving off the road and getting stuck in mud, so I got right back on, because at least that way I was guided by the lights of the car in front of me. The drive back had severe weather warnings, too, and I was so paranoid about dealing with a downpour again, I drove back way too fast for roads that wet and brakes as run down as mine are.

You Should Give it a Shot

Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a rough week. I've been sniped, grenaded, and betrayed. I've been blown up, beat down, and plowed aside. I've been shot at, run over, and tossed out of planes. I've guarded my flag against enemies, defended my home against invaders, and penetrated enemy defenses at the risk of my life. I've neglected my blog and have done nothing at all. Ladies and gentlemen, for the past week I have been playing Halo 2.

I Voted, and All I Got Was This Lousy President.

So the election isn't quite a done deal, but even with a tie, I'm not expecting much from the House of Representatives.

This Christmas, I'm asking Santa for a Philosopher King.

I Voted, and All I Got Was This Lousy Sticker.

Eventually I did head out to the polling place, boyfriend in tow.
I feel accomplished, somehow...like I've just passed some rite of passage. Yesterday I was a child, today I am a voter (and I will forever be a dork.)

p.s. It's getting cold out, and I don't like that at all.

I choose you, Pikachu!

I thought there was some law against reporting election results before all polling locations had closed so as not to influence voters on the west coast. Either I'm wrong, or the good people of the Associated Press are naughty, naughty lawbreakers.

Regardless, at this point I've not yet gone to vote; that will be my exciting after work activity. Aside from the presidential hopefuls, I know squat about the general election candidates. I hate the idea of making an uneducated decision, but going to the polls and not voting on everything on the ballot also galls me. I can't find anything more than a list of candidate names, and trying to look up stances for each one is enough to make me tear my hair out. Oh, comprehensive site, come to me!

Greek Aurant v.2

Saturday I went to a Greek restaurant with Nick's family for his dad's birthday. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood, so I had a fun time. I'm glad I went. The food was very similar to our favorite Greek place before it changed management (we called it the Greek Aurant due to burnt out lights on the sign.) We suspect the original owners may have started up this new restaurant.


Nick's mom is really pretty, and in this picture, she also really drunk.


With Nick. I like this one better than our posed picture because it's animated.

Who Ya Gonna Call?

I went out last Friday and didn't feel like spending money a mediocre costume, so I just threw on a tank and a short skirt with a mesh prom underskirt and dragonfly wings, and I was a pixie! I went to a big haunted house with Alisha and Walker, but I was pretty unimpressed. I think I just have high expectations because Alisha was constantly screaming. She told us after that whenever she goes into a haunted house, she starts to wonder if there's maybe this one real psycho hiding out there. I wish I'd thought of that, because I would've freaked out more, and it would have been more fun that way.

I had a crappy martini, and a watered down Long Island Ice Tea, but sometime along the night Alisha and I got some decent stuff and stumbled around downtown a little drunk while Walker laughed and told us we were dorks. What made my night more than anything was Walker's costume. He was a Ghostbuster, and the costume came with an inflatable photon pack, and every few minutes some drunk person would yell "Hey! Ghostbuster!" "Who ya gonna call?!" "Look! It's a fucking Ghostbuster!" Everyone was just so excited about it. It still didn't top his costume from last year, though. He'd bought some weird cloth zebra-head mask from Goodwill, but everyone kept calling him a giraffe. It was silly.

I Will Have My Revenge

Happy Halloween!

Crappy Poetry

I have no delusions about the quality of my poetry. It is really bad, but I have a lot of fun with it because I don't even try to make it good.

My Wandermonster has wandered away,
And bid of me that I should stay,
And partake of things that give me cheer,
So far away from he who's dear.

But bright Nintendo makes me glum,
And reading books is simply dumb,
So what remains can only be,
Writing Nick bad poetry.

This only goes to show what a poetical bad-ass Bava is.

Nerd, ho!

Guess who just got featured on the home page of a gaming community?

Stuck with your (Parking) Lot

'My car's not working.'

'Are you serious?'

'Yes.'

I was smiling. It really didn't do much for my credibility.

It was the like blind leading the blind. Here I was, picking Walker up from work because his car hasn't been starting, and my car won't start. I turned the key, and the car let out a smug 'RRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!'

We called Nick. We watched a half-dead wasp struggle against a swarm of ants. We talk in the car, and Walker tells me my ex is glad I'm happy. I like to think the reason he can't keep a girlfriend is because I'm incomparable. At this point, I only resent him for never saying 'sorry,' but I still resent him. It's sweet of him to wish me well, but at the same time It galls me that he shows neither jealousy nor regret. I am a petty creature.

Nick arrived and jump started my car. (Yay Nick!) I was so relieved that it was just my battery. Then, he suggested we all get food but didn't tell me I was supposed to pay for everyone, and I had to use the money I was saving to buy a new pair of boots. Wait.... What?!

A Life in Subtitles

I was reading this interview with Gael Garcia Bernal when he made this response to one of the questions:

"...Every time I see a film [that takes place] in Mexico, with people speaking English, I just think, "Why?" If they can speak in Spanish, why do you have to compromise the culture and language? The fact of doing it in English just makes it very lame and naive."

'Yes!' I thought. Why do they do that? I watched Frida a few days ago, and I found it disconcerting to hear all these people speaking in accented English while supposedly living in Mexico. At one point they go to New York, and they are still speaking English, but I wonder, 'Is she actually speaking Spanish while everyone around her is speaking English, and no one actually understands each other?' Regardless of that annoyance, it seemed to miss something because it was in English. It lost credibility, it lost sincerity, it lacked something vital to a culture: language.

'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' 'Hero,' 'Amilie,' and 'Y Tu Mamá Tambien' have proven that enough of the American population is willing to 'brave' a subtitled movie for it to do well, so I really hope more directors will direct films in different languages. I think I'm also pretty excited at the possibility of more foreign films making it to US theaters. They come with their own flavor and style, and I really love that diversity.

No Candy

I do the shopping for my office, and one of the one of the guys, JFK, told me I wasn't allowed to buy candy anymore (because almost everyone is trying to eat healthier, and I ruin it my buying miniature wrapped snickers. He walks into the kitchen right after I've put away a bunch of candy, and I'm standing there with a giant fist full of empty candy bags, so I jedi mind-trick him a la 'these are not the droids you're looking for' and tell him I didn't buy any candy.

'Ok, good' he says, and begins to turn to leave when he spots the big tub of candy on the counter. 'Hey, what's that?! he asks, looking surprised. Then, he points it finger at me and say 'You're going to hell. You know that don't you?' I thought it was pretty funny, especially since he was oblivious to the bounty of candy bags overflowing from the cornucopia that was my hand.

I don't think he caught the Star Wars reference. So sad.

Don Juan de Libros

As much as I lament over the tremendous quantities of books and games I own but have yet to read or play, I find I spend more time browsing books and scanning game reviews than actually reading and playing. I guess I just love the chase.

Yesterday I sat myself down and played five hours worth of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga. I am a gaming force to be reckoned with.